


Checkmate

by shaykreth



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang 2015, Gen, Horror, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, fade shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:27:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaykreth/pseuds/shaykreth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Iron Bull rejects the Qun, but his choice leaves him with much to regret. Solas wants to help, and guards his dreams against madness, only to find something else there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checkmate

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! :D This is my entry for the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang! Art by the lovely HazyHades~ I'll add a link to the second piece of writing that was done once I have it, hehe. 
> 
> I TOTALLY bit off more than I can chew with this idea. I hope it is at least a little creepy? Concrit really welcome, this is not at ALL the normal kind of stuff I write, but I really wanted to push myself to do something different as an exercise. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

After the explosions, the fighting, the drama of all that happened at the Storm Coast, The Iron Bull finds the journey back to Skyhold extremely dull. The adrenaline of the fighting, of watching the Venatori approach his boys, hyped him up. Then, the shame that washed over him - first when he hesitated over sounding the horn, second, and more horrifyingly, over Gatt’s accusations - left him feeling shaky.

It isn’t a pleasant combination.

The Iron Bull tries to focus not on himself but on the good that came from his decisions, but… He is having a very hard time getting out of his own head.

The Iron Bull ruefully considers that it must be this emotional turmoil that drives Qunari to turn Tal-Vashoth, because what else do you do with yourself when there are all these feelings and nothing to focus them? He’s joking to himself, he hopes, but knows that there is something to the fact that, for his entire life, he relied on the purpose of the Qun to define his each and every action (or was that even true, he is forced to consider), and now thinking back to that training feels decidedly empty.

He turns to reassurance. His boys are okay. The Inquisitor backed him. She knows how much the boys mean to him, and she wouldn’t let him drop something that made him… more than what the Qun shaped him to be. A life spent in service to something that ultimately didn’t even do right by him.

By all accounts, the Inquisitor is a shining example of what he could became. She may be Vashoth, so far outside of the control of the Qun that, according to their own teachings, she should be nothing more than a frothing beast, but she was noble. She was kind. Regal, even.

So The Iron Bull sits, resting in the back of the requisitions wagon on the way back through the Hinterlands. His legs are stretched out in front of him and his arms are crossed over his chest. He dozes, head lolling forward through short naps interrupted by a bump in the road or a shout from one of the guards - curious rams blocking the path, the odd caravan stopped on their own trek to Skyhold.

Night falls, faster and slower than it should in the weird time created by sleep. The Iron Bull knows he should keep himself busy. That there are things he could be doing while they move, knows that the Boss has taken a few out to tend to some newly-popped rifts.

But he doesn’t quite trust himself. Not yet.

He takes some solace in meditation, focusing not on the Qun but on the Chant, one of the many things he’s memorized in his work with the Ben-Hassrath. He knows the Qun better, and even though he knows the words aren’t what matters (it’s all about rote memorization, the repetition, the cadence and rhythm of the syllables), he can’t quite bring himself to turn there. Not yet.

There are, in any case, similarities between the religious texts, core messages that seek to answer the same question of purpose and roles. Vastly different results, though.

Solas climbs into the wagon with him some time after they’ve stopped for the night. The Iron Bull has eaten with his boys, joked with them and found his own mirth lacking, frustrating himself as much as Krem. He went back to the wagon, stretching out and thinking. Concentrating.

Searching himself for madness.

Solas is silent at first, digging into his pack for some of the jerky he keeps there, a favor he asks of the kitchens. The seasoning is his own.

“Would you like some?” Solas asks, unwrapping the cheesecloth bundle.

The Iron Bull sits up a bit straighter, nodding. “Yeah. Thanks.” He takes a proffered piece, chewing into it and humming appreciatively. “Shit, this is good.” It’s spicy, of all things, a flavor he has never associated with the elves. All the elven crap Dalish and Skinner put him up to eating are more aromatics than anything, and while that’s not bad, it’s nothing like the food he really likes.

Solas smiles, enigmatic and careful. “Thank you.”

They eat, silent but not uncomfortably so. The Iron Bull watches Solas, not trying to hide it. Solas is smart, he knows. He’s observant. He’s also hiding something, but The Iron Bull hasn’t been able to suss that out after months of working together - often in very close quarters - and if he’s going through that much effort to keep his secrets then all the more respect. Not that The Iron Bull trusts anyone with their cards held that close, but he can offer respect without trust. It’s something then Qun taught him well.

For whatever it ultimately was worth.

“You are not Tal-Vashoth, Iron Bull, not really.”

The Iron Bull blinks at Solas, who returned his stare, hands resting palm-up in his lap. Unthreatening. A thoughtful tone.

“Well that’s a fuckin’ relief.” The Iron Bull laces his words with sarcasm, because of course Solas would try to rationalize this in some way, given his distinct hatred for the Qun. The Iron Bull had been preparing himself for this discussion, and he is unsurprised by Solas’s attempts to deflect the truth.

“No more than Adaar, whose parents left the Qun before she was born.” He tilts his head to the side. Inquisitive. Open. Prepared to discuss. “You are no beast, snapping under the stress of the Qun’s harsh discipline. You are a man who made a choice… possibly the first of your life.”

His attitude bothers The Iron Bull. Solas is very good at adopting a holier-than-thou attitude, as though he knows more about anyone else’s society by virtue of his… what? Age? Race? Unhealthy amount of time spent sleeping in other peoples’ histories?

The Iron Bull remembers Solas’s words to him months ago - “most of them are ‘savage’, as you say, because your culture taught them nothing else” - and it reflects his own thoughts. ‘Has my culture taught me anything else?’

“I’ve always liked fighting.” The Iron Bull tears out a chunk of jerky - a cheap tactic, highlight something more savage about himself, making a point - and he knows that Solas will take it for the empty gesture it is. “What if I turn savage, like the other Tal-Vashoth?”

Solas’s response is fast. “You have the Inquisition, you have Adaar… and you have me.”

The conversation pauses, The Iron Bull pondering Solas’s face, his expression hiding nothing, for once. The Iron Bull wonders if this is one of the first times Solas has been truly honest with him. Sure, the man likes arguing with him, and his heart is behind the words he says. He doesn’t like the Qun. He doesn’t like anything that even remotely smacks of slavery to him - ‘Am I thinking of it as slavery now, too? That was fast.’ - but his heated words are one thing.

This… the kindness is something else.

“Thanks, Solas.”

 

\----------

 

Solas walks, his dream self moving silently through the various structures and not-structures of the Fade. He is at home in this shifting landscape, comfortable with the non-euclidean nature of the place beyond dreams. ‘Yes,’ he thinks to himself, ‘four steps and turn and think of castles and I can see what Josephine dreams.’ 

‘Think of a flower, a quiet home, a solemn Chantry with kind mothers, and I can follow Sister Leliana.’

‘Sera dreams with smells, of baking, of blood, the sour smell of city waste, punctuated by the sounds of arrows fast.’

Solas knew how to find and watch over many of the people in the Inquisition. As easy as breathing for him was finding his companions in the Fade, as easy as stepping through a doorway and navigating the hallways of Skyhold. Each night, Solas took a journey through the Fade for those who were home, who were struggling, who he knew may be at risk.

All for Adaar, whose dreams were tumultuous at best, who did not understand the power in her hand nor what chaos she could wring out of the world through a twist of her hand. Terrible dreams haunt her, still, often finding her through the ties she creates so tightly with the others in her care.

So Solas watches, and checks, each and every night on the Inner Circle and on the Inquisitor, on her friends and confidants, to ensure their dreams were as pleasant as possible.

Given the nature of her tagalongs, the task is an incredibly… trying one. Many are haunted by their own demons, in both the metaphorical and unfortunately literal sense. Cullen is followed by a pack of spirits, Desire and Hunger and Fear still outnumbering Faith, Compassion, Loyalty by a number that, while dwindling, still spoke volumes of the horrors he had experienced in his short life. Blackwall was haunted by his own Jealousy and Despair, but his Faith (in Adaar, of all things) was a shielding presence.

It is all Solas can do to shield Adaar from the worst in her companions, most nights.

The Inquisitor and her traveling party had returned in the afternoon from their journey to the Storm Coast, where they were to secure an alliance with the Qunari, or, more accurately, with the Qun. Solas spoke his piece about the deal, warning of the tremulous nature of any deals made with those whose ties were first to doctrine and control before any individual cause.

Pleased as he was that the deal had fallen through, he caught the haunted look on The Iron Bull’s face as he ducked into the tavern with the rest of his entourage. His smile was strained, his back straight and muscles bunched, as if he was struggling, wrestling, with some unseen force.

Perhaps he was.

The Qunari and their ilk remain a mystery, a strange byproduct of the world during his extended Uthenera, that Solas has yet to properly unravel. The strength of their conviction and dedication to the rules that rule their life disturbs him, but so does the ingrained belief that without their self-accepted slavery they would be nothing worse than beasts. The Fade offers little in the way of knowledge to him. He just hasn’t found the right places to sleep. But he will, when he has a chance. Patience he has in droves.

Adaar is Vashoth, has never known the Qun, and is no more savage than any other member of their merry band, no more cruel than the ever-increasing demands of the Inquisition required. But Iron Bull, he was born under the Qun. And Solas has seen a fair number of Tal-Vashoth who could do little than froth and kill; he has had put down many in his time since awakening.

What manner of people were these that they could be crafted with such culturally-induced insanity? Let loose they… go mad?

It makes no sense to Solas.

And so he worries over Iron Bull. The night of their return, he goes to him in the Fade.

Despite Iron Bull’s protests that Qunari don’t dream, Solas knows that the Qunari were not outright rejected from the Fade in the manner of the dwarves. Adaar, unsurprisingly, given her state, dreams frequently and often unpleasantly, but it didn’t start with the advent of elven magic in her hand.

Iron Bull dreams infrequently, sporadically, but his dreams are harsh and often powerful things, thick bubbles in the Fade of Pain, Anger, Disappointment. Compassion and Faith lurk near him, the periphery of the stage he sets for himself in sleep, but the magnitude of hurt makes it hard for them to get close enough to ease the pain.

Solas approaches him with caution in the Fade, wary of spirits his melancholy may draw. He believes himself weak now, without the Qun, though his heart had left it long ago.

“You are not Tal-Vashoth.”

It is a truth, was a truth when Solas shared it. The difficulty lies in teaching Iron Bull to believe it himself.

This night, Iron Bull is surrounded by his own Fears. Before, his dreams were well guarded; Solas suspects part of the Qun’s teachings include various meditations that allow for a particular state for sleep that provides one with more defenses than an ordinary non-mage would ever possess.

(Which leads to interesting thoughts on the nature of Qunari in general - are their connections to the Fade fundamentally different than that of other mortals? Their mages are abnormally strong, wild things, which Solas always considered some byproduct of poor training but maybe…)

Now that Iron Bull has turned from the Qun, however, his Fear - madness, of the Chargers dying, of himself falling to assassins and losing what little purpose he has left.

Solar relates to these fears. He has experienced them a great deal himself.

He pulls on the spirits in Iron Bull’s bubble of sleep, casting a ward to keep them at bay. They stretch and howl at the wards, but are given no choice but to retreat. As they pull away from the reality Iron Bull was creating, Solas catches a glimpse of the dream. He tries not to pry too much into the lives of the Inquisition’s inner circles, lest he find them peering back. But sometimes...

As he watches a dispassionate Iron Bull - or rather, Hissrad, for this is not the same man who travels with them now - tear apart painted warriors with his bare hands, he shudders.

It is then that he sees, through the bubble and staring, unblinking, at him, the stranger.

A spirit with long arms and longer fingers. Fuzzy around the edges, with an indistinct shape outside of curling limbs with no care for bones or standard structures. It has no eyes that Solas can recognize at such, but there is absolutely no denying that he has its full attention.

Solas frowns, but holds out a hand. “Ho! What manner of spirit are you?”

The stranger does not answer him. It stands just outside the wards he has cast, closer than any of the others. It makes no motion outside of it’s edges, where the outlines of it shifting and morphing in a way that makes Solas dizzy.

“I mean you no harm! Please, allow me to help you. This man is weakened. He has nothing to share with you but fear.”

The stranger’s arms elongate, reaching across the wards, through the dream, and Solas feels a vast wrongness.

This is not a spirit.

This is not a spirit.

I AM NOT A SPIRIT.

He wakes.

  
\----------

 

The Iron Bull travels with his Chargers to Adamant. He doesn’t normally accompany them on the little missions the Inquisition decides could use their particular brand of violence, but after traveling to the Fade and seeing way too much  demon crap , there isn’t much he’d like more than to take a warhammer to the walls of the old fort.

He also needs some time with the boys.

It hasn’t been quite two months since he had officially been turned out, as it were, and while he has enjoyed training with Krem and drinking with his own inner circle, he knew that he’d do better with a bit of time as The Iron Bull of the Chargers.

A leader, a commander, is a role he had before he left, and it’s role he knows well. Old habits die hard.

So he travels with them, stopping at more than a few taverns along the way, paying generously and building up the reputation they’ll depend on after all this Inquisition crap is over.

Now that he knows there’ll be something for him and the boys after the Inquisition.

The Iron Bull leads them, keeping everyone on a schedule and a routine to have them out to Adamant back to Skyhold in a reasonable time. They reach the edge of the Western Approach after only a couple of weeks of travel, and it’s only another week before all the siege engines are back up and running. The fortress is falling in very dramatic fashion when a group of Venatori show up.

Because of course they do.

The Iron Bull takes Krem, Skinner, Dalish and Rocky out with him to deal with the group - 18 Venatori, by Skinner’s count, a mixture of mages and armed forces in a dragging group that could clearly do with a bit of leadership.

“This ought to be fun,” he rumbles at Krem, who grins madly back.

“Knocking the shit out of a demon fort, and killing a bunch of ‘Vints? Chief, if this is how you ask a guy out, I can’t imagine why the Altus keeps turning you down.”

The Iron Bull returns the grin, and on Rocky’s count of three they slide down the sand dune to greet Venatori with accompanying explosions and “arrows”. Krem is quicker to reach them, a bit faster on his feet despite The Iron Bull’s longer stride, and though Rocky and Dalish’s attack took out a solid four of the bigger brutes, half of the rest look to be mages and barriers flash across the crew.

‘Fifteen left.’

The Iron Bull and Krem know how to deal with barriers.

Krem sticks one foot in the sand and pivots with his maul, hitting one of the mages solidly in the side of his chest. Her barrier blinks and she cries out as the sheer momentum of the hit knocks her sideways five feet and cracking her staff. Krem lifts his maul and drops it on her shoulder, the barrier completely fails and she is eerily silent in her death.

The Iron Bull doesn’t have any of the flash Krem has - damn Vints - but his height gives him a distinct advantage in how he can handle is weapon. He holds his maul like a croquet mallet, knocking into a Venatori’s knee hard enough to reverse the joint, then hitting him again in the hip and finally the chest.

‘Thirteen left.'

By this point Skinner has reached the crew and is bouncing in and out of combat, finding those left wounded from Rocky and Dalish’s assault and finishing them before they have a chance to fire off some kind of final death curse or some crap.

‘Ten left.’

The Iron Bull no sooner updates his count than he hears Krem’s cry of alarm - “CHIEF!” He turns, taking a cut across the back for his split attention but seeing Krem go down to the greatsword of a Venatori who has no business being as big as he is.

The Iron Bull feels it, the lurking strength of a reaver, and he lets it take over. The haze that takes the pain of the cut across his back, of the ache in his knee and the bruise across his shoulder (a lucky staff hit, really) and turns it into something more.

One hand drops from his maul and slaps the mage he’s engaging back, blood pouring out of his mouth from a bitten tongue and his mouth hanging slack. A kick to the face from a steel-capped boot and he is out.

The maul is swinging, now, one-handed, the other hand - missing fingers - grabbing at the hair of a brute and yanking, pulling it out in painful chunks that bleed before another handful holds the head still enough for a headbutt that knocks the man to the ground. The maul crushes his head into the sand and the damage to his scalp is inconsequential.

Another one gets the maul to the face but only after spurting fire from her fingers, burning across grey skin tougher than most cured hides. Another’s chest is crushed beneath the weight of the steel and the man pressing it down until things crack.

He has made it to the one who knocked Krem down, who fights distractedly as he attempts to take out the elf darting around him but clearly trying to put space between him and the Qunari. The Iron Bull abandons his maul. Hands grab, one in the Venatori’s mouth and the other on his weapon arm, squeezing as the bones slide and crack under the grip, the hand in the mouth curling and ripping through a cheek.

Blood coats his arm. He licks a finger clean while crushing his heel into the man’s nose, leaning down then pressing down harder with his foot, both hands grabbing the broken wrist and pulling until the shoulder dislocates and the sound of meat tearing and ripping fills his ears -

“He’s dead, Chief, he’s dead. I’m fine. He’s dead.”

The Iron Bull looks up, snapping out with this mauled hand to snatch at the speaker.

“Chief!”

Blood on his chin and slicking his fingers. He drops his hands. He struggles to remember, ‘What am I supposed to do to break this? How do I stop it? What are the words?’

“I’m alright, Chief, he got me in the side of the head, knocked me silly. I’m alright. I’ll be fine.”

Krem’s litany fades the haze.

The Iron Bull returns. Somehow. One bloodied hand wrapped around a strap of Krem’s armor, lifting him to his toes.

He drops him.

‘This is why we’re supposed to stay.’

  
\----------

 

Solas found sleep elusive. A problem he hadn’t had in… a very long time. His hobbies (his reason for even existing, he feels, at times) revolve around his ability to sleep when he needs to, when he can, for as long as possible. But since… whatever it was he saw when he checked up on Iron Bull did  whatever it did , sleep has not been easy.

And when he did sleep.

Well.

He falls asleep long after Dorian left his alcove and visits with the ambient spirits of Skyhold. It is the location of much history, much of it happening long before the Inquisition moved in, and it makes for many spirits and many stories.

Solas loves places like this. The spirits here remind him of the time before the Veil, before he was forced to break everything he loved about the world. Not only was the history present in the forms of spirits playing out favored moments, but the current occupants draw so many more spirits.

While Solas keeps watch for the inner circle, on nights like these, when many were out on missions, Adaar included, he could indulge in the multitude of other spirits who gathered around the Inquisition. Adaar is an inspiration to many, and the number of Faith spirits that kept court at Skyhold continuously amazes Solas. He keeps expecting Templars to be cured of their addiction and Tranquil to turn up cured (secretly hopes they do).

As he wanders, he passes along the outskirts of Iron Bull’s dreams, where again, he stops to check. Iron Bull did not have a successful venture, he gathers, watching the content of the dream play out over and over again in excruciating, bloody detail. Solas knows a memory when he sees one. Watching Iron Bull nearly pull a man’s arm off is… alarming.

The Stranger is there, again, with his focus not on Iron Bull but on Solas.

“You are here again.”

I NEVER LEFT. I FOLLOW.

Solas sits, the Fade molding itself for his comfort. “So you say. Are you the madness Qunari so fear?”

NO. THIS QUNARI’S MADNESS POSES LITTLE INTEREST TO ME.

The creature’s arms seem to stretch without moving, fingers trailing into Iron Bull’s dream as it replays again. It flickers, disturbed, and Solas prepares a ward, but the creature pulls back.

YOU ARE READY TO DEFEND HIM, FEN’HAREL?

Solas wishes he had a better face for surprises; he can feel it on his face before he schools himself back to neutral. “How do you know who I am, spirit?”

I AM NOT A SPIRIT.

“You said that before. What are you, if not a spirit?”

I AM SOMETHING MORE, NOW. I USED TO BE A SPIRIT. AS A DEMON IS A SPIRIT WARPED BY INTERVENTION, SO AM I.

“The things here are spirits, and a demon is a spirit,” Solas spoke with irritation. “If you are a spirit whose purpose has been altered, then allow me to help. If you care little for the madness of this man, why are you here?”

NO. YOU ARE LOOKING TOO FAR AWAY, FEN’HAREL. I AM NOT HERE FOR THE QUNARI.

“Then what -”

YOU WILL WAKE NOW.

And he did.

  
  
\----------

 

The Iron Bull stays back the next time the Chargers go out. Krem wants him to come, says it’s just rattling some nobles’ chains, looking big and impressive. (“Chief, you  love  being big and impressive!”) He  wants  to come, but he... doesn’t want his boys to see him like  that  again.

Not until he’s sure how to leave it. Sure he can keep his hands off his men.

He stays at Skyhold. Adaar is holed up with her council, working through their next steps and how they’re going to mobilize their entire fucking army for a march south. The Iron Bull is just glad it gives him some time with Solas.

Solas had initiated their little philosophical cease-fire after The Iron Bull was Tal-Vashoth, with his extension of goodwill that evening in the wagon, and then an active attempt to follow-up on it.

“How do you feel, Iron Bull? Do you need a distraction to focus your mind?”

“Well, this area’s low on dancing girls, sadly.”

“King’s pawn to E4.”

Whether or not the elf had been entirely friendly to him before, he was certainly being a good friend now. The Iron Bull doesn’t want to trust him, he still keeps his cards damnably close to his chest, but he plays a mean game of chess and is a natural philosopher. Both things which remind The Iron Bull he is not entirely mad.

Not yet, at least.

The odd third man to their little discussions would have made The Iron Bull uncomfortable, had, in fact, done so, but now he enjoys the kid, Cole, when he asks his non-sequiturs and makes Solas smile.

In their usual way, they are talking, again, about the Qun.

“So you think the servants, say, in Denerim are happier than the people who live and work in Par Vollen?” The Iron Bull eats from a plate of cheese that the kid brought with him, Cole himself sitting on the floor and listening with his trademark intensity.

“It doesn’t matter if they are happy, it matters that they may choose,” Solas answers, leaning back in his chair.

“I think they’d disagree with you, at least some of them.” The Iron Bull mimics his body language. “What’s the choice, to do their work or get tossed onto the street to starve?" 

Solas frowns, a sure sign that The Iron Bull is asking the right questions. It’s not that he wants todefend the Qun in its entirety, not necessarily, but he does want Solas to acknowledge that there is some validity to the idea of having a greater force that provides for the good of all over the success of the few.

“If a Fereldan servant decides that his life goal is to… become a poet, he can follow that dream.”

“Likely straight to his death, honestly.”

“Sweet, singing sounds sold for silvers, they said, but he still starved. They starved. His children.” Cole splits his gaze between The Iron Bull and Solas as he speaks.

“Uh. Do I want to know whose head you just peeked into?” The Iron Bull still finds it creepy when he does that.

“A servant. Sold his songs for… for nothing. Now he’s in Skyhold, serving sweets for Vivienne.”

Solas scowls even more, as The Iron Bull grins. “So he got to choose, and somehow still ended up a servant.” He grabs more cheese. “That’s the only point I’m making, Solas. Yeah, it’s great to want to have freedom, and everyone should get to make that choice, but the Qun does offer an alternative for the rest.”

“The littles,” Cole offers.

“The littles.”

Solas lets out a deep sigh before shaking his head. “I cannot find the choice in what the Qun offers.”

“He chose to change,” Cole speaks up. “Fielding the fence for their own freedom, but… but.” Cole frowns. “It’s not a fence at all.”

Now it’s The Iron Bull’s turn to frown.

“It was the only choice, Cole,” Solas responds with the tone of a man who has hashed this conversation over with the the kid several times. “Please. Not now.”

“It still hurts.” Cole is staring at his hands. “I’m sorry I did it wrong.” He looks up sharply, staring with wide eyes at Solas, and The Iron Bull feels very much like an intruder. “Where did it go?”

“I apologize, Cole. That is not a pain you can heal.”

  
  
\----------

 

Solas sleeps. He is more cautious in the Fade than he can ever remember being. His last encounter with The Stranger was genuinely alarming. Never had a spirit controlled his reality. Never had a spirit altered his own story.

Solas seeks out The Stranger, wanting - needing - to learn what this creature was and why it is haunting Iron Bull.

He makes attempts in wakefulness to help Iron Bull. To pull him from his own obsession over his madness and to point out to him the thoughtful, caring man he is without the baggage of the Qun.

But during sleep? Iron Bull’s dreams still bleed, Fear still wraps around him, and The Stranger still haunts.

Solas finds Iron Bull’s dreams, and, again does not find The Stranger until he looked up from the bloody battlefield of his dreams.

“Are you the reason he struggles so? Some side effect or intended haunt brought on by the re-education attempt?”

I AM NOT OF HIM.

Solas folds his hands behind him, feeling the Fade beginning to shift as it did last time.

“If that were true, why do you make pains to attach yourself to him?”

YOU SEE THINGS THE WAY YOU WANT TO, FEN’HAREL.

Solas no longer sees Iron Bull’s dream, but rather a visage of his own home, of the world he lived in before the Veil. He must not let his discomfort show. He must not let this creature know how uncomfortable he is with the way it can pick into his own memories.

THIS WAS WHERE YOU BUILT THE QUN.

Solas jerks. “That is a rediculous assertion. I had nothing to do with the slavery of these people. They did not even exist in the same time as I!” He scowls at The Stranger, its focus unmistakably on him.

EVERY ACTION HAS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTION.

“And the creation of the Qun could not possibly originate with me. I sought to free people, not to enslave them under a different master!” Solas waved his hand at the tower in front of him, a tall, stone spire of elegant design. He pushed his will against it, asking the Fade to show The Stranger his own memories, of the people sitting before him as he taught and explained the problems with the teachings of the Evanuris. “We sought to free the elven people.”

WHAT DID YOU TEACH THEM, FEN’HAREL?

Solas watches his younger self - full of passion - speak to the gathered group. “I taught them that a person should always have a choice. That slavery to the Evanuris was not something anyone could choose. It is by definition the lack of choice.”

SO WITH YOUR FREEDOM YOU CHOSE TO CREATE THE VEIL.

“I did. A terrible, necessary decision.”

The vision shifts, his own existence erased from it - years later, he assumes, after the Veil’s creation and his Uthenera began - and he watches the elves he taught teach the others. Years pass in seconds, life crawling all over the land like ants, before The Stranger deems him worthy of hearing.

“But what is the nature of the elves? Are we mortal, like the creatures springing forth from the earth, or are we creatures of the Fade? Where do we belong?”

BY REMOVING THE FADE YOU CHANGED THE ORDER OF THE WORLD, FEN’HAREL. HOW DOES ORDER RETURN?

Solas steps back, shaking his head. “It was altered. I will bring it back in my own time. It is why I am awake now, spirit.”

THEY SOUGHT ORDER. A PLACE TO BELONG. YOU TOOK THAT FROM THE ELVES, SO THEY SOUGHT A NEW PLACE TO BE.

“Thus the Dalish formed, years after the final fall of the people.”

THEY FOUND THEIR COMFORT IN CEASING THEIR STRUGGLE. IN FINDING THEIR ROLES AND FULFILLING THEM.

Solas turns to The Stranger, uncomfortable. “Are you…”

THE EARLY DALISH. THEY CREATED THE STRUCTURE, THEY BUILT A PLACE FOR A PEOPLE DISPLACED BY YOUR ACTIONS. FROM THAT, A FRACTURE.

The Fade showed a group of elven, no vallaslin marking their faces. A man spoke, gesturing calmly. “You have seen the greatest kings build monuments for their glory, only to have them crumble and fade. How much greater is the world than their glory?” He sits before the crowd. “The seasons change, each to their purpose. The sea and sky whittles the stone, each to their purpose. Struggling wins no fights. We, each of us, have a purpose to serve as well - what greater joy can there be than finding a tide to which you belong and allowing it to flow in and out, endlessly, with you as a part?”

Solas slashed against the image, magic lighting his eyes and under his skin. “No! You are aspirit, and this some trick of your nature.” He pushes against The Stranger where it stands, magic diffusing around him and shredding the body into smoke.

It reforms, closer this time. Its words in his ears, so close Solas almost thinks the words are coming from himself.

YOU CANNOT BE RID OF ME, FEN’HAREL. I AM YOUR REGRET. I AM YOUR CREATION AND YOU WILL HAVE ME BACK BEFORE THIS IS OVER. YOU WILL WAKE NOW.

  
  
\----------

 

At Adaar’s insistence, Iron Bull ends up accompanying Solas, Cole and the woman herself on a trip to the Hissing Wastes. He needs to get out, she says. He’s spent enough time pissing about what had happened, and sitting around couldn’t possibly do any more good.

He’s pretty sure she has a point.

He drops down from the bluffs on top of a wyvern with a hoot - smashing it with the flat side of his new axe. “Boss! Did you see that?”

Adaar is laughing at him, shaking her head. “Yeah, yeah, you big showoff! Just wait, I got a new trick that Sera taught me, you’re gonna lose your head.”

Cole stands awkwardly beside her, daggers still in hand as he tilts his head at Iron Bull. “This is better. It’s not the same.”

Iron bull shares a smile. “Yeah, kid. This isn’t the same.”

Cole smiles, bright and sure of himself. “You are not the anymore, Iron Bull. You are not a thing. You are you.”

Iron Bull shakes his head, seeing the smile Adaar is giving him as she listens. “Well, look, I got a reputation to keep up, so don’t go around telling everyone I’m not a machine of murder anymore, got it?”

Cole’s smile falters. “I do not understand?”

Solas is standing back from the group, watching something. His gaze is far away.

He’s been like this most of the journey. Jumpy, distracted, and Iron Bull doesn’t really know what to do with it. Adaar is bothered but just as stalled about what to do, Cole just staysaway (something that is more disturbing than anything else, honestly). 

Iron Bull waves Solas over. “Come on. Where were we?”

He takes two steps forward before he jerks his head up to look at Iron Bull. “Hm?”

Adaar looks between the two of them, frowning a little. Iron Bull shakes his head, just a little, an unspoken “later”, before he speaks again. “Where were we in our game? I think it was your move. Unless you want to just give me another go, not that I need it with that piss poor plan you seem to be bent on...”

There’s a pause before Solas answers, more thoughtful than Iron Bull expected. “Knight to H4.”

The group moves on, Adaar determined to suss out the contents of one more dwarven grave before returning to camp for the night.

“Arishok to G5,” Iron Bull decides. “So you giving up the Tamassran at B5 or the Ben-Hassrath H4?”

What was once a distraction to focus himself has changed, turned around for Solas’s own benefit. Iron Bull didn’t know Solas was capable of being out of sorts, but over the last month he had become withdrawn, and dark circles have appeared under his eyes. For someone who claims to spend so much time asleep, he sure hasn’t been doing much of it lately.

“Neither,” Solas answers after a small bit of silence. “Knight to F5.”

“Pawn to C6,” Bull answers quickly, hoping to maybe speed the pace up and get Solas distracted from whatever he’s currently worrying over. “Left your Tamassran hanging out.”

“And you, your Knight,” Solas answers, turning to look across the space they’ve been crossing, frowning and eyes darting, reflecting green in the moonlight.

Bull stops, watching him with concern. “Solas?”

He looks back at Bull, eyes wide. “Did you see it, Iron Bull?”

“Uh… I saw a fennec?”

“No, no, it’s… It’s been in your dreams,” Iron Bull feels his blood run cold at such a sentiment, “since you left the Qun. I have been trying to understand it, but it shouldn’t be here!” There is a heat in Solas’s voice. As off-putting as it is for him to hear about some apparently demon crap that’s stalking him, he’s… really been doing pretty good and thinks that maybe… maybe Solas is the one with the problem.

“Solas…” Iron Bull looks back, Boss and Cole moving ahead but slowly as they wait for him to catch up. “Look, you haven’t been sleeping well. Maybe you should cut the Fade walking for a little bit and get some real sleep, yeah? All that demon crap can’t be good for you.”

The stare he gets from Solas is cold and hot at the same time, eyes focused but anger simmering, so brief but there. Bull saw it.

Solas calms his face, a quick restructuring of the muscles that Bull would be impressed by in any other circumstance.

“Right. You are obviously right, and your concern is appreciated. Pawn to G4.”

  
  
\----------

 

Once they reached camp, Solas immediately retreats to his tent for sleep. The Stranger is waiting for him. “I saw you!” Solas accuses, stepping right up to the thing, the form’s shadowy,smokey constrains bleeding before it reforms a short distance away.

YOU ARE CHASING SHADOWS NOW, FEN’HAREL.

It sounds pleased. “No! I saw you!” He feels his face twist, and a snarl tears its way from his mouth. “You! This is enough! You have haunted my friend, and now you toy me with - with - not even fears! What manner of spirit are you, to torture me so?”

I WAS NEVER HERE FOR THE IRON BULL. AS I SAID BEFORE. REGRET. I AM YOUR PERSONAL REGRET, SO GREAT EVEN THAT THE FADE ITSELF FEELS IT AND GIVES ME POWER.

Solas slashes the air with a hand, magic trailing behind it as he reaches for ice and fire to fling at the spirit - the demon - that taunts him still.

“No more words, thing. No more!”

I AM HERE FOR YOU, FEN’HAREL. I AM YOUR REMINDER. YOU CANNOT SUCCEED WITHOUT ME.

The Stranger’s formed danced between existence and not, smoking away and back, closer first then further away, from the magic Solas flings. A frustrated shout punctuates the glyph he paints in the air, an attempt to slow the creature and give him a chance to actually strike at it. 

His plan backfires. The creature slows and Solas has the uncomfortable experience of watching it disintegrate and reappear in front of him, its form no longer so amorphous as Solas recognizes the bones and the skin as it tightens its shape together. Brain, heart, bone and matter, solidifying in slow motion right before him and Solas cannot move he is so mesmerized by this spirit before - before - before -

I HAVE YOU NOW.

  
  
\----------

 

Solas wakes with a start. Bedroll. Sand. Still in the Hissing Wastes. Adaar is snoring in the tent nearby. He turns to The Iron Bull, who is awake and watching him with caution.

It is the appropriate look, he supposes.

“You, uh. You feeling okay there, Solas?” The Iron Bull speaks, voice a little rough around the edges. He had been asleep. His concern is charming.

Solas smiles. “Actually, I am feeling a great deal better. You were right. Sleep was in order.”

The Iron Bull does not relax as he speaks. “That’s good news. You’d been looking kinda rough. I was getting worried I might have to, you know,” he draws a line across his throat, a joke, or not, Solas cannot tell, “do something I really didn’t want to.”

“I thought you chose your place. Is your place a killer?”

The Iron Bull’s face tenses a brief second, before Solas laughs. “That was in poor taste.” Yes. This is how you deflect, he remembers now. “Knight takes Pawn at G7. Check.”

There’s a pause before The Iron Bull answers. “King to D8.” His response is guarded. As it should be.

“Queen to F6, check.”

“And now my Ben-Hassrath takes your Queen. You’ve got -”

“Mage to E7. Checkmate.”

The Iron Bull is staring at him, and Solas watches the expressions cross his face as he replays the last few moves.

Solas smiles.

What is the point of regretting the loss of a few pieces? He controls the board. 


End file.
